We’ve got a sample contract posted inside for you to fax in case you misplaced yours.

Liza writes:

I followed your advice to get out of my Verizon Wireless contact using the text messaging hike and it worked! Two different representatives made me fax in a scanned copy of my user agreement (something I DID NOT expect) before I finally got a supervisor on the phone. I had an old copy of a user agreement in a drawer, who knows if it was my most recent one, and scanned it and faxed it to VZW. Once the supervisor saw the fax she didn’t argue with me at all. I would recommend this tactic for anyone having trouble. I’m out, with no fee, on the 25th! They’re even letting me port my number if I do it in the next 10 days. Hooray! Thank you, consumerist! I’m attaching the scanned copies of my user agreement for you to post on the website so that anyone can use them, even if they’ve lost their copy.

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Every state in the Union provides that the parties to a contract have an affirmative duty to act in good faith. Verizon is trying to get out of its contractual obligations by seizing upon its understanding that the typical consumer does not hold on to their contract or that it will be difficult to find.

This is by definition bad faith. And it might even subject them to punitive damages should a consumer choose to sue them.

Certainly, it shouldn’t be hard to find a consumer attorney to file a class action against Verizon for unfair business practices.

“Verizon is trying to get out of its contractual obligations by seizing upon its understanding that the typical consumer does not hold on to their contract or that it will be difficult to find.”

I had a cell phone company do something similar. They said they didn’t have the original and wouldn’t honor the pricing they had given me. I would have thought that if they didn’t have a copy of the contract then they couldn’t hold me to it either–oddly, they didn’t see it that way.

Wow, I’m glad I got out when I did. I used the “Text Increase” to get out late last month and ended up talking to a guy named Christopher for 45 minutes about military stuff. Great guy, and managed to slip the note about waving the ETF after building some rapport.

I am still fighting mine out. I have talked to three different reps, and convinced all three of them to credit my account for the ETF, yet they still billed it to me. Now they say that they will give me a credit on my account for what they billed, and I will have to wait 90 days before they send me a check. Talk about cheap move…

I don’t know about pay-as-you-go, but there are places offering very reasonable month-to-month fixed-cost plans if you’re in an appropriate location (and don’t need to travel with your phone). I used Cricket Wireless while involved in a dispute with Cingular; in discussing their coverage, it came up that they generally stick to locations where they don’t have competition (explaining why they cover Houston but not Dallas, which has metroPCS) — so there are certainly other companies with similar business plans or said competition would be a nonissue.

I called twice. Both times the CSR mentioned that I dropped my message package only 5 days ago and it “seemed” to them that I was trying to do that to get out of my contract. One actually said that they have a policy of not allowing people out of their contract if they recently dropped their message package (which I’ve had for years with them… and they also cited that).

I told them that they didn’t say anything about recently dropping a messaging package in their legal document… it just said that if you don’t have a messaging package as of March 1, 2007, you would experience a price increase.

They then offered to have a supervisor call me back on Monday morning.

Monday is when my Cingular Blackberry Pearl is delivered. I hope I can get this resolved… I’m a nervous wreck over this.